Back in the beginning of May we planted pumpkin and sunflower seeds (if you missed that post you can see here) and I wanted to give you an update as to how they look now. I am always amazed at how quickly the plants grow. In the picture above I am standing next to some of the sunflowers we planted and most of them are as tall or taller than me already!!

We planted a variety of different sunflower seeds and the colors turned out so beautiful. We really love the red ones but they are all so pretty.

After the sunflower seeds started to grow in the cups that we planted them in we transplanted the plants into bigger pots and the children helped take care of them by watering them. We also measured and recorded the growth of the sunflowers.

After the pumpkin seeds started to grow we put them into a garden plot and after a while they really started to vine off and flower.

We have quite a few pumpkins growing and more on the way. We planted different varieties as well ... jumbo ... jack-lantern ... pie ... and white pumpkins. We are super excited to see what they look like as they grow further. Once the pumpkins have grown more I will be sure to share what they look like.

If you have not yet done any gardening with your early learners I highly recommend that you give it a try as there is so much the children can learn and observe from it.

I have posted August's Number Tracing Calendar and Calendar Numbers along with other August items to myfree printablespage (if you do not see them at the bottom of the page please refresh your browser).

I glued the sea shells inside a file folder and laminated the loose color circles. I didn't put the sea shells in any special order in the file folder ... I just glued six on each side. If you do not have a file folder two pieces of construction or cardstock paper taped together can be a great substitute.

Sea shell alpha and number sliders also added to the member's section.

The free membership printable this week is a sea shell color match file folder game which is a great activity for color recognition and review. I printed the twelve different colored sea shell patterns and circles on cardstock paper and cut them out.

In this activity children put the loose color circles on the matching color sea shells. You can grab the patterns for free until Sunday July 26th ... after that they will only be available in the member's section.

To help with color recognition I made a frog themed color sort activity that the children really enjoyed doing. I printed the frog patterns on cardstock paper and the color circles on regular paper.

I cut the frogs out and glued them on craft sticks and then cut the color circles out and glue them on clear plastic cups. There are twelve colors included with this activity so you will need twelve craft sticks and twelve plastic cups if you are going to use all of the colors.

I put the frog color sticks in a container and set them out with the color cups. You can choose what colors you would like to work on and make as many copies as you want of the color frogs to be used in each sorting cup.

In this activity children pick a colored frog stick from the container and put it in the cup with the same color circle. Play continues until all of the frog sticks have been placed in the cups. You can grab the patterns here and see a video of this activity below:

We made sequin frogs to go along with our frog themes and they turned out super cute. I printed the pattern on cardstock paper and the frogs were cut out and glue drops applied to the pattern.

We then pressed the sequins onto the glue drops and let them dry. Because the children have to pick up the sequins ... hang on to them ... and then place them on the glue dots this is an excellent fine motor project.

The children really enjoyed make the sequin frogs!! You can grab the pattern here and see a video of this activity by clicking below.

The free membership printable this week is frog number puzzles which is a great activity for number recognition and review. I printed the patterns on cardstock paper ... cut them out ... and laminated them.

I cut the puzzles in half and mixed each half up so the numbers were not in order. The set comes with numbers 0-30 so you have a variety of numbers to choose from for the children to use.

In this activity children find the two halves with the matching numbers and put them together to form the frog. You can grab the patterns for free until Sunday July 19th ... after that they will only be available in the member's section which is where you can also find the frog alphabet puzzles.